"Frosted" engraving effect on acrylic with a 2 watt laser?

[Anachronicman]

Hi,

Has anyone had any good results creating a frosting effect on acrylic for creating edge-lit signs?

I have has some success by painting the acrylic with matte black paint and then engraving into this. The engraving shows shows up quite well in the acrylic, but as a series of ridges/grooves when looked at closely.

thanks,
AM

[Stiffler]

I don't understand, what does this have to do with lasers?

[Anachronicman]

Isn't laser engraving with a 445nm laser diode related to this forum?

If not, please point me in the right direction.

Here are two images of the results I have achieved.

[Stiffler]

OK, I did not realize that the actual engraving in the plastic was being done with lase; don't mind me....

[steve-o]

Welcome to the forum AM!

There is one member that I know of who does engraving, here on this thread:

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...ight=engraving

[JJWMACHINECO]

AM,

I found your web site http://www.darklylabs.com and it looks like you are going to start a Kickstarter Campaign next week with a 2W 445nm laser diode cutter and engraver. I seen the raster photo engravings on there and they look OK.

I'm not quite sure how your controlling your LD's intensity/power, but you state that you have Accurate Laser Control and can adjust the laser's intensity from 0-100% on-the-fly as you cut and engrave. Since we are the ones that developed/invented this analog modulation laser diode engraving process and looking at your photo engravings, I would recommend some improvements to your process before your launch date.

This may be a good forum for you to spread the word of your system and campaign. Your machine looks pretty interesting on how it's built! Can you give us any details of it?

Did this one one yesterday on Birch Ply with the first system we built that has a 1W 445nm using PEP 4 + Laser.

Jeff

[Stiffler]

JJWMACHINECO,

How deep do these engravings go? What I mean is, would they be sanded off easily? Just curious:-)

[JJWMACHINECO]

JJWMACHINECO,

How deep do these engravings go? What I mean is, would they be sanded off easily? Just curious:-)

It only embeds into to wood slightly in the darker areas, but does take allot of hand sanding to remove it completely. I never tried measuring the depth it actually penetrates into the wood. I normally seal these with clear paint so they won't fade over time.

[VDX]

... the 'engraving depth' depends on power and interacting time - I'm driving my 445nm-diodes with powers between 0.1 and 1.5 Watts and pulse times of around 1 to 300 microseconds for either marking/engraving or cutting.

In light plywood longer interacting times gives 'engraving' dephts until some millimeters -- with sanding you'll remove the brownish edges of the cut and fill the cut with dust, so the lines loose much contrast compared to the original look ...

Viktor

[Anachronicman]

Hi everyone,
It's great to see some interest in this thread!
Jeff: Your engravings look fantastic. They definitely inspired us early on to make sure our machine (LazerBlade) could create this type of beautiful artwork.

The LazerBlade runs on a modified version of GRBL, an Arduino based gcode interpreter. We use the "variable spindle speed" output to control the laser intensity. We have also developed our own very efficient laser driver module so everything works together neatly. The kickstarter campaign will list all the details, so stay tuned for that.

Over the past few months we have been working with John Champlain, another pioneer in the laser engraving field. He has been adding support for GRBL into PicLaser-Lite. The images you see on the website were created with his software.

Engraving into wood and getting results like you show is quite an art form. So many factors come into play on top of the technical machine requirements. Wood type, finish, image composition etc all play a major role in the result. The images on our website were made very early on and since then we have been able to create engravings with finer details through experimentation with laser power ranges and speeds.

The kickstarter campaign is an effort to help complete development on the LazerBlade and get it on the market. The launch date this week is unfortunately not moveable, but this should not limit us from the continual improvements we are making.

We are excited to start sharing more results with interested people and get their feedback and thoughts. What would be the best way to do this? Create a new thread or continue on your existing one "CNC Laser Engraving 8bit Shades of Grey 445nm"?

thanks,
AM